5 minute read
International collaborations
Strathclyde English academic features in The Paris Review
Dr Rodge Glass, Convener of the MLitt in Creative Writing, has authored an article for The Paris Review about the life, death and works of the great Glaswegian polymath Alasdair Gray. The article was published in New York and made available online and has since been made a featured article this week, being widely read and shared worldwide. The Paris Review is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 and articles are now published in New York and made available online. Dr Rodge Glass authored Alasdair Gray’s biography, before his death in December 2019. Photo: Strathclyde English academic
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Franco-British Defence Cooperation Royal United Services Institute, London
Dr Rogelia Pastor-Castro’s AHRC-funded project The Weight of the Past in Franco-British Relations aims to explore how conceptions of the past have impacted the evolution of FrancoBritish relations since 1815. It asks how French and British policy elites have used history to understand the past and anticipate the future. Additionally, it considers the extent to which subjective interpretations of the past have shaped the conceptual horizons of these policy-makers.
In November 2019, a Witness Seminar - UK, France and the Lancaster House Treaties - was the first in a series of project events that will bring academics and policy-makers together to consider these questions. Focusing on the Lancaster House Treaties that foster closer defence and security cooperation, it asked witnesses to consider the treaties through the context of historic Franco-British relations, challenges to sovereignty and visions and expectations for the future. Dr Pastor-Castro and Dr Rachel Utley (Leeds) opened the seminar by discussing the historical framework of the project. They highlighted the complexity of memory as both lived and historic. As a discursive tool, it has been mobilised to both facilitate and impede FrancoBritish cooperation. They also stressed the significance of this topic for contemporary Franco-British relations, which continue to evolve around different conceptions of European cooperation.
The seminar witnesses included Sir David Omand, who during his career in British government service held senior posts in security, intelligence, and defence. He was UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator in the Cabinet Office from 2002 to 2005. He was a Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000, and before that Director of GCHQ. Also speaking was Dame Mariot Leslie was head of the FCO’s Policy Planning
Staff, ambassador to Norway, FCO Director General for Defence and Intelligence, a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee and UK Permanent Representative to NATO (2010-14). The French perspective was represented by Admiral Luc Pagès, Defence Attaché, French Embassy in London. Each participant brought a unique viewpoint to the discussions, drawing from their experiences in policy-making, diplomacy and security. All of the witnesses stressed the value of trust and interpersonal relationships in Franco-British relations.
However, these individual working relationships between career diplomats and civil servants could be impeded or held hostage by higher-level tensions between national leaders. Several witnesses suggested that in this instance diplomats had the vital task of safeguarding Franco-British relations behind the scenes. Turning to post-Brexit Franco-British relations and the future of the Lancaster House Treaties, the panel offered cautious optimism and expressed their belief in the longevity of the agreements.
Discussing Sustainable Urban Development in Delft
European cities are playing fields of intensifying contemporary challenges. Traffic congestion, air pollution, climate change effects, clean water and energy provision, jobs and skills issues, housing and social segregation largely concentrate in urban areas. Cities are also in the position to develop innovative solutions to these multiple challenges. Doing this effectively
means that cities have to scale up their cooperation, seek new solutions, and develop a solid knowledge basis for bottom-up evidence-based policy-making.
These themes were the subject of a lecture by Peter Takacs, Policy Officer in the Inclusive Growth, Urban and Territorial Development Unit of the DG for Regional and Urban Policy. He provided an overview of EU Urban Development policies, ranging from the 1997 strategy ‘Towards an Urban Agenda’ to the mainstreaming of Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) in the current programming period. SUD in 2021-27 promises further increases in coherence and integration of EU support to cities, as well as territorial interventions targeting full functional urban areas.
After his presentation, two discussants raised thought-provoking questions, and the audience participated in the ensuing discussion. Verena Balz, Lecturer in Regional Planning at TU Delft and Cottbus University of Technology, highlighted the gaps that exist in SUD strategies and the dependency of their success on local planning systems. Martin Ferry, Senior Researcher at EPRC, raised the importance of monitoring and evaluation systems of the interventions, and of coordination with existing local strategies. Part of his intervention referred to his recent work on the performance of Integrated Territorial Development Strategies.
The event was part of a joint series ‘Contemporary challenges in European spatial development’, organised by the Spatial Planning & Strategy chair in Delft’s Urbanism Department and EPRC Delft. This third session in the series was moderated by EPRC Director John Bachtler and Marcin Dąbrowski, Assistant Professor in the Urbanism Department of TU Delft.
As the EPRC base at the Technical University of Delft is built up, EPRC is developing its cooperation with Dutch government departments at different levels and with universities. The lecture by a representative of the European Commission, leading on European Sustainable Urban Development strategies, is an example of the new opportunities provided by our location in the Netherlands.
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A new EPRC study on the Visibility and Communication of Cohesion Policy in Online Media has been published by the European Parliament. Led by EPRC’s Carlos Mendez and John Bachtler, and Vasiliki Triga at the Cyprus University of Technology, the study employs a mixed methods approach to investigate media coverage, representations and user perceptions of cohesion policy in online media. The research draws on an original dataset of over 60,000 news articles and 100,000 user-generated comments. It also analyses social media – over 11,000 Facebook posts and over five million tweets on Twitter – and 13,000 EU press releases. The key conclusion is that cohesion policy visibility is relatively low in online media. Policy recommendations are provided to improve cohesion policy visibility in the media, particularly through citizen engagement.
Click here to download the full report.
